Have you ever wondered what it's like to be a female taxi driver? If so, read on…

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On a night when I was feeling rough, full of the symptoms of the onset of a horrible cold, I got a job to pick up some students, to take them to the LCR. I wasn’t exactly feeling party-tastic, but I decided to make the effort and put on Chase and Status to help keep them feeling lively on their way to their Student Union.

The four girls were (predictably) garbed in fancy dress costumes, and kept me waiting nearly 10 minutes, which, when you’re a taxi driver, is exasperating at the best of times. Finally, we set off.

As I approached a side road, I spotted a mother Muntjac deer with her young, hesitating in the road. I stopped to make sure they didn’t panic and run into the road, and the girls in my car squealed in astonishment.

“Look, a deer!” one exclaimed.
“I’ve never seen one before!” said another.
“Are you sure it’s not a fox?” asked the third girl.

Stoic at the best of times in the face of unbelievable student f***wittery, as an Honours Zoology graduate I was simply unable to contain my feelings.

They didn’t notice, all too busy caught up in their own little drama of having annoyed their poor neighbours with their noisy pre-drinks.

We got to UEA. The fare was more than they had anticipated, with the charge for waiting time. Hah. The girl in the front paid the £6.50 fare with a ten pound note, and then insisted that the three girls in the back gave her £2 each.

“But that comes to £8,” protested one of the others, working out the total sum if each passenger contributed the same amount.

“No,” said the girl in the front, who was evidently far from popular with the other girls. “Because two times three is 6.”

Despair reigned.

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I picked up four students tonight, three from England, and a third year exchange student from America. Perfect customers, they were friendly, interesting and chatty. Our conversation flowed, and it was lovely, engaging journey. They were all complimentary, each thanking me as they left. The American girl was last.

“You,” she declared, “are the @&£!ing sh*t. You’re in the Top 10 taxi drivers of all time.”

I was grateful for the inclusion of the definite article in her first statement.

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had an appropriately bizarre series of customers last night… to the point that the occasional customer who WASN’T in Halloween costume looked frankly weird.

Highlights of the festivities included:

* being reassured by an earnest and eloquent Frankenstein that his caped friend wouldn’t be sick… turned out that the cape was in fact a blanket from a volunteer paramedic, and the friend had left most of his evening expenditure in a bucket in the ambulance…

* two older witches with their partner wizards, walking up the drive of a private house… suddenly joined by a silent mass of fellow witches and wizards who were making their way up from the bus stop…

* a witch in a very short dress being boosted over a church wall… turned out that she didn’t have any knickers on :-&

* Fred Flintstone and a delightfully curvaceous Wilma, who I dropped off in fine fooling, and collected a few hours later… poor Wilma had overindulged and was feeling a bit queasy, while Fred patted her shoulder reassuringly…

* having my taxi chased by a blood-spattered man in a leather apron, much to the delight of his friends, all of whom turned out to be my customers. He then sat right behind me, and genuinely creeped me out without doing a thing…

* Seeing random lone zombies stumbling home, drunk enough to give a convincing impression that the city was being invaded by the undead…

* and finally… I pulled up at one club to discover that my customer was in a Nazi costume, complete with Swastika. The distaste on my face was evident. “Do I really have to pick YOU up?” I asked.

“You shouldn’t discriminate against people just because of how they look,” came the wonderful reply.

It transpired that he was quite a decent lad who abhorred everything that the Nazis stood for, and has chosen his costume as it represented, in his words, “the evil of all evils.”

We had a good chat about racism (which he had experienced) and gay rights, and about his costume. It turned out that he had hired the basic costume from a local shop, but that the Nazi embellishments had been made by his Mum. Really.

As I dropped him off and drove away, I was witness to the bizarre spectacle of a Second World War Nazi soldier bending down to tickle a little cat under the chin.

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I picked up four students, three girls and a boy, at the end of their alcohol-fuelled night out. Their accents reeked of childhood gymkhanas and croquet lawns.

They were debating their imminent sleeping arrangements at the ear-splitting volume of people who haven’t yet adjusted their voices to the fact that they are no longer in a club. Such voices have an exceedingly short life-span in my cab

One girl, sitting behind me, was delighted to discover that I was a female taxi driver. Apparently, I had made her night.

“You’ve had a pretty crap night, then,” I remarked, smiling.

We broke into conversational groups. I chatted with the lovely girl next to me, whom I recognised from a previous journey. The girl behind me was determined to try to dominate the conversation. Suddenly she shrieked, “ANAL SEX?!!! That’s DISGUSTING!”

The girl next to me froze in her seat, as horrified as her friend, but for entirely different reasons.

“I think that’s a conversation that we should continue at home,” she said hastily, staring fixedly ahead.

“Oh, don’t mind me,” I offered. “I’ve heard worse.”

(In actual fact, earlier in the evening, I had a frank discussion about a variety of types of adult work with a lap-dancer, whom I was taking to her workplace. As she got out of my cab, she remarked,

“That was a lovely journey. I wish more people were as open-minded as you!”)

Back to the students. While the other two girls cringed in their seats, and the lad regretted starting the conversation in my presence, the loud girl continued with a succinct explanation of exactly why she thought anal sex was disgusting.

It transpired that her primary concerns revolved around both the logistics and the hygienic feasibility. Her upbringing might have been refined, but her choice of vocabulary was not.

The boy was insistent that these potential hazards could be overcome.

“It’s like, if the girl had a poo, like six hours before, it would probably be ok,” he insisted. “Or, she could have a chronic irrigation.”

As I fought to maintain my composure, my hand flew to my mouth, in an effort to stifle my mirth. They mistook this for revulsion, and apologised profusely and sincerely as they left.